A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki—shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

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Editorial Reviews

*Starred Review* Ozeki has shown herself, in the novels My Year of Meats (1998) and All over Creation (2003), to be a careful, considerate writer who obviously insists on writing what she wants to write and in the fashion she prefers. That special care and concern are also detectable in her latest novel, an intriguing, even beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual but attentively structured plot. Ruth—the character Ruth—is a writer living in a remote corner of the Pacific coast of British Columbia who is currently thwarted by writer’s block as she attempts to compose a memoir. One day she finds a collection of materials contained in a lunchbox that has washed up on the beach. As if she has unleashed a magical mist, the items she finds inside, namely a journal and a collection of letters, envelop her in the details—the dramas—of someone else’s life. The life she has stumbled into is that of a Japanese teenager, who, believing suicide is the only relief for her teenage angst, nevertheless is determined, before she commits that final act, to write down the story of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun. We go from one story line to the other, back and forth across the Pacific, but the reader never loses place or interest. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher is in love with this novel and will do everything from providing an author tour to presenting extensive radio and online publicity campaigns to bring its virtues to a wide reading audience. --Brad Hooper

Review

"a masterpiece, pure and simple" - Kirkus Reviews

"Saturated with love, ideas and compassion. It is, in short, an absolute treat." - The Sunday Times (UK)

Like a wise but playful teacher, [Ozeki] guides us through her latest novel by periodically questioning what we know of the story and how we know it…This book pays its deepest homage to Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, but it also shares much in common with the books of Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Anton Wilson. Like them, Ozeki manages to turn existential conundrums into a playful, joyful and pleasantly mind-bending dialogue between reader and writer. - Globe and Mail

“Ozeki has great fun in this novel…Fiction and non-fiction blend and dissolve, creating an intriguing, fluid form of storytelling.” - Chatelaine

“A Tale for the Time Being is a timeless story. Ruth Ozeki beautifully renders not only the devastation of the collision between man and the natural world, but also the often miraculous results of it. She is a deeply intelligent and humane writer who offers her insights with a grace that beguiles. I truly love this novel.” - Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation—on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery—is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement, this is a book to be read and reread.” - Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

“There is far too much to say about this remarkable and ambitious book in a few sentences. This is for real and not just another hyped-up blurb. A Tale for the Time Being is a great achievement, and it is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Ruth Ozeki has not only reinvigorated the novel itself, the form, but she’s given us the tried and true, deep and essential pleasure of characters we love and who matter.” - Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World

"Ingenious and touching, A Tale for the Time Being is also highly readable. And interesting: the contrast of cultures is especially well done. I greatly look forward to Ruth Ozeki’s next book." - Philip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of His Darkest Materials trilogy

“A Tale for the Time Being is a downright miraculous book that will captivate you from the very first page. Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki proves that truly great stories—like this one—can both deepen our understanding of self and remind us of our shared humanity.” - Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

“Ruth Ozeki is a fearless writer, and this novel is terrific in every sense: beautiful, gripping, thought-provoking. A story I savored and will return to.” - Madeline Miller, author of the Orange Prize winner The Song of Achilles

“A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about a courageous young woman, riven by loneliness, by time, and (ultimately) by tsunami. Nao is an inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother’s story, to connect with her past, with the world, is both aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and here she is at her absolute best—bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page. A Tale for the Time Being is one of those novels that will renew your faith in literature.” - Junot Díaz, National Book Award finalist and author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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This is a story-within-a-story. One is the account of Nao, a 16-year-old girl who is yanked out of her comfortable life in California to return to Japan when her father loses his job. In between her suicidal thoughts, she decides to write the story of her grandmother, the Buddhist nun. The other is the story of Ruth, a novelist living with her husband on an island off the coast of Canada.

One day a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on shore, possibly from the 2011 tsunami. It contains a collection of artifacts, and an account of Nao's life. With Ruth, we are drawn more and more into Nao's story.

I am stingy with my stars, but I am awarding this one five stars. Both stories are enchanting, and we care as much for one as the other.

Nao defines a time being as “. . . someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

It is a book that will stick in you memory for a long time. I plan to reread it in a year or so.

Time is defined as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole." But a definition cannot begin to capture what time feels when you have to live through it. Through this PhD program I have wrestled with the concept of time. There is never enough of it. It either passes too fast, or too slow. Reading this book was extremely lethargic, for the main characters, speak of time often.

Nao, the sixteen-year-old girl who's diary is the center of this story, explores what time means and how frustrating it can be. Her diary is for a time being, "...someone who lives in time..."; this book is meant to be read, for we readers are time beings. It is not often that you find a narrative that looks to explore this conception of time and does it so well. I have to say though, the plot line is heavy and it took me awhile to finish reading this story. And by awhile, I mean several months. It is not a book that one devours, just like Ruth (the other main character) did not devour Nao's diary in just one sitting.

In A Tale for Time Being, there are two stories being told side by side, with one narrative's character addressing the other one. Nao writes her diary addressing the person who will find it and speaks to them as if they were already a part her life. At some points you aren't sure who needs the other more, is the writer needing the reader, or is the reader needing the writer?

The juxtaposition of reading both the perspective of the writer and the reader, while yourself being an additional reader is trippy. It plays well into the themes brought up throughout the book, particularly the theme of time. Because time passes by differently for the writer, the reader of the diary, and then you the reader of the book. There are three different timelines, but everyone is centered on Nao's story.

I was most stricken by Nao's definition of "now". Nao explains "now" as: "...in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then. Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn’t. It’s like the word is committing suicide or something." This blew me away because she's hitting the nail on the head. Can we ever capture the now? As I am typing now, it is already then. Is it futile to attempt to capture the now, when it will always be the then? Is even trying to capture the now not allowing you to experience the now?

The theme of exploring the conception of time resonated with me. Time is as elusive as the wind. You can feel it happening, but you can neither touch or see it. However, both wind and time can have physical effects on the world, and you can feel them both passing by. Time is also something that we all have to experience, regardless of how short or long we remain on this earth. However, it is not often enough that we appreciate time for what it is. Our time is limited; we only have so many heartbeats to be had, so spend them wisely.

"In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth." —Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

This book really pulled me in. Other reviewers mentioned the end being confusing, but if you hold space and time a little bit loosely, it makes sense. I wasn't annoyed like some reviewers by the middle aged writer with a writing block. I felt she was very human and I could relate to some of her experiences. I loved reading the diary of the girl in Japan and her memories of her great grandmother. I actually enjoyed this book so much that I looked at the bibliography to get more ideas of what to read next. Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns was one of these books and I started reading it next. I really enjoyed the character of the great grandmother who was a zen nun living up on the mountain. The Women Living Zen book is really fascinating and delves more deeply into the history of how these nuns lived and still practice today in Japan. Another book that the author of A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki, praised is Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye by Marie Mutsuki Mockett. I really enjoyed this book as well and it complements some of the Japanese culture and background, including zen practice.